Eight months into the Trump presidency and still no sign of his promised border wall, Fox & Friends is starting to wonder if President Trump may have been speaking metaphorically when he proposed such a barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border. "[H]as the wall almost become symbolic?" Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy pondered Thursday. "I know the president ran on it. It was a mantra. But at the same time, border crossings have gone down dramatically and you were talking about how the wall exists in certain forms and there's money to go to it ... but do you think we're going to get to the point where maybe they won't build the wall?"
The debate was sparked by Trump's Thursday morning tweet insisting that his "WALL" was "already under construction in the form of new renovation of old and existing fences and walls." He said it would "continue to be built." Trump posted the tweet the morning after his dinner with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who said Trump at the sit-down agreed to "work out a package of border security, excluding the wall."
Former Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz, who recently joined Fox News as a contributor, swooped in to try to explain why Trump, who led chants of "build that wall" at his rallies, was now seemingly setting aside his promised wall while simultaneously suggesting it was already being built.
Chaffetz claimed Trump "doesn't need congressional authority to build the wall" because it's "already there." But then he said Trump does need funding, and it's "solely in the camp of the United States Congress to fund what the president promised he would do." Chaffetz said Trump will build the allegedly already built wall so long as Congress, whose authority Chaffetz claimed Trump does not need, will "step up and actually fund it."
Watch the discussion over at Mediaite.